Fat Vampire Value Meal (Books 1-4 in the series) (38 page)

Reginald had barely touched his blood. In front of him was a pot pie and a cheesecake. On his left, Celeste was beaming like a cliche Italian mother who’s gotten someone to eat because they’re too skinny.
 

“So,” said Maurice.

Reginald didn’t reply. He was trying to eat the pot pie, but he was so excited about Celeste’s food that his fangs wouldn’t retract. He kept biting the fork by accident, occasionally getting his fangs stuck between its tines.
 

“So,” Maurice repeated.
 

“So that’s some pimp cup you have,” said Nikki, to break the awkwardness.
 

Maurice threw his napkin at Reginald.
 

“Yeah?” said Reginald. He sounded like he’d just been awoken from a nap.

“Charles,” said Maurice.
 

“Reginald,” Reginald replied.
 

“If you don’t stop making love to that pot pie for long enough to talk to me, I’m going to take it away.”
 

Reginald wrapped an arm around the plate. Then he set his fork down, wiped his mouth with Maurice’s napkin, and looked up.

“Fine,” he said. “Down to business, then. Here’s my analysis as your resident fat mentat: Your days as an effective leader are essentially over. Charles has won.”
 

Since the Balestro incident, Charles had gained significant power on the Vampire Council. It wasn’t because he was a good leader or brilliant orator, but because he told the assembly what it wanted to hear. He’d also gone onto the protected vampire internet and begun spreading videos and written propaganda telling the populace what
it
wanted to hear. The Vampire Nation wasn’t a democracy, but the will of the masses soon began to feel palpable. Everywhere Reginald and Maurice went, they could sense the eyes of other vampires on them, seeming to ask why the Deacon couldn’t propose solutions as Mr. Barkley was doing… and if the Deacon was, therefore, fit to lead the Nation at all.
 

“He’s won?”
 

“Hearts and minds. All he needs to do is to spout anarchist propaganda and tell vampires that they have power over humans that the angels want them to use. Even if he does that and nothing else, his position is already much, much better than yours. Think about it. What are
you
telling them? To legislate? To negotiate? Maybe to do some scientific research?
Booo-ring.
”
 

“I don’t know what else to do,” said Maurice. “There’s no easy button to solve this problem.”
 

“Sure there is,” said Reginald. “It’s just the wrong thing to do. A slow, methodical plan for change requires patience and small steps. Killing and turning thousands of people into vampires is easy. Every one of us knows how to do it. It’s in our blood. And what’s more, Charles can claim that he’s trying to meet us halfway. You were against penalties for wanton creation, and he’s removed them. You wanted to open up creative freedom, and now the Nation has it. All thanks to Charles and his group. How can you argue against the very agenda you were pushing without sounding like a flip-flopping asshole?”

The Ring of Fire and what to do about it had become the only issue that mattered to the Vampire Council and the Vampire Nation. There were two diametrically opposed schools of thought on the matter, and the vampire media had given names to both of them. On one side were
Progressionists
like Maurice, who wanted to expand vampiric existence through scientific and sociological means. On the other side were the far more numerous
Decimists
, whose quick and easy solution was the widespread decimation of humanity — the unleashing of vampire abilities that, in the minds of Decimists, had been held in check for too long. Decimists didn’t care if they turned humans or killed them. They cared only about improving the vampire/human ratio.
 

One popular Decimist video showed Charles in a faked speech, ranting, “The Deacon got what he wanted. Prejudicial barriers have been removed! Anyone can become a vampire! We will accept all takers! And yet he’s still not happy!”
 

Maurice had watched the video while slowly shaking his head. He wasn’t any good at politics because he wasn’t gifted at manipulation. On the surface, it looked as if Maurice had gotten what he wanted because anyone could be turned, but even a tiny bit of scrutiny revealed the difference between Maurice’s vision of creative freedom and Charles’s. Anyone could
become
a vampire, but only the elite were
remaining
vampires. Overweight, overly young, overly old, and disabled vampires were being staked as fast as they were created. Maurice didn’t know the proper lie to tell in order to shift public attention from his seeming wishy-washiness and onto Charles’s deception.
 

“It doesn’t matter,” said Maurice. “I’m still Deacon. I can’t be assassinated outside of Council unless they want Gregor the Schizophrenic to take over. I can still veto laws through my proxy at Council. It’s okay. I can live with being hated.”
 

“You might want to adjust your complacency,” said Reginald, whose mind had been entertaining daunting scenarios for weeks. “Gregor could be influenced, like a puppet, by Charles or someone like him. You could be assassinated on one of the trips you do take to Council. Decimists could simply take over the whole government in a coup, then reorganize it from top to bottom. Or what’s going on now could simply keep happening — more reckless killings and turnings, done in the face of laws that nobody bothers to enforce. The law is a pretty fragile thing when you’re the only one playing by its rules, Maurice.”
 

“It doesn’t matter,” Maurice repeated, shrugging defiantly.

Celeste shot him an exasperated look, as if they’d discussed this over and over.
 

Nikki stood up. “How many people are dying, Maurice? How many people are being turned and being staked? It
does matter!
” Then she turned to Reginald and said, “Tell him about the other thing.”
 

Maurice looked at Reginald.
 

Reginald sighed and cocked his head to one side. “I’ll just say this flat-out, without candy coating. Deacon Toussant, you’re about to lose the small amount of power you still have.”

“What do you mean?” said Maurice.
 

“Fangbook,” said Reginald.
 

Maurice actually laughed. Fangbook was the vampire version of Facebook. Percentage-wise, Fangbook was actually far more popular and widespread than Facebook, with over eighty percent of American vampires using it at least once a month. Maurice considered the network stupid and frivolous, but a large percentage of the population felt differently.
 

Most vampires left behind a large group of family and friends when they were reborn. They could still interact with those people after turning, of course, but few did. A vampire’s lifestyle wasn’t entirely compatible with a human’s, if for no other reason than because the latter was now considered food. So young vampires, suddenly blessed with amazing new abilities, found themselves without an outlet for their bragging and their stories of conquest, and Fangbook helped to fill that void. Fangbook friends became real friends. Because the vampire population was so much more spread out than the human population, newbie vampires tended to latch onto Fangbook as a discussion outlet for all of their darkest inner doings and desires rather than trying to find others in person. Fangbook was extremely explicit, and most users’ photo sections looked like either police crime scene photos or porn shoots, and often both. The chat was wild and uninhibited. The network itself became a primary way to connect with other vampires, to form long-distance groups, and to arrange hunting parties or orgies.
 

“Don’t laugh,” Reginald continued. “Fangbook has over fifty-thousand users, and more each day as new vampires are created. You may not want to be a part of it, but most vampires do.”
 

“So what? Let them whack off to murder photos and tell everyone else when they’re reading the newspaper.”
 

“Do you understand how it works?” said Reginald.

“More or less. Like a giant directory.”
 

“That’s what it used to be,” said Reginald, “but it’s more than that now. First of all, it connects eighty percent of the country’s vampires — plus a lot of global vampires, though not as many — and it gives them a community. We’re no longer loners living alone in holes, hiding from the daylight. Fangbook gives vampires a unified society and, as needed, a central place to discuss issues that matter to them so that everyone can participate. And do you know what they’re discussing right now, and have been for months?”

“The Ring of Fire,” said Nikki, pointing at Maurice like an accusation.
 

“And do you know
why
they’re discussing it? Other than the fact that it’s on their minds, I mean? Do you know
how
they’re able to discuss it in such detail? Do you know how they’re discussing facets of the
actual laws
on the table at Council?”
 

Maurice’s forehead wrinkled. At least Reginald had his attention.
 

“There was a measure a while back, right?” said Maurice. “Something that opened records to the public or something.”
 

“A simple thing,” said Reginald. “The law you’re talking about is now a few months old. All it did was to automatically post Council proceedings to the largest group on Fangbook. They already had permission to access that information, of course; it’s all public record. But now, thanks to the new law, it started being dropped smack-dab in front of them on a regular basis. And that may sound like nothing, but what it’s done is to keep the issue — in all of its legal, from-the-top detail — front and center in the collective psyche. People are very resilient and forgetful, and given time, they’d forget about the Ring of Fire and would get right back to everyday life. But this new measure ensures that they’re presented with new information on a regular basis that will rile them up and remind them that the angels are watching all of us, that the clock is ticking, and that the Ring of Fire didn’t go away. It just backed off a few paces, and could return at any time.”

“And I didn’t veto that measure,” said Maurice.
 

“Well, it was a rider. It was tacked onto a bill that relaxed bootcamp admission requirements.”
 

Reginald knew that Maurice would remember that one. He’d been excited when the Council had proposed expanding the group of humans eligible to become vampires. He’d taken it as a sign that his agenda and philosophy was slowly but surely getting through.
 

“So the populace is getting riled up,” said Maurice. “And so… you think this puts me in more danger?”

“It does, yes. But there’s more. Do you remember the Anti-Slaughter bill?”

Maurice nodded. The “Anti-Slaughter” bill was a measure that made it formally illegal to kill certain protected classes of humans. Maurice had been excited by that one as well. He thought it showed promise that the vampire psyche was becoming more empathetic.
 

“Do you remember the rider?”

This time, he shook his head.
 

“The rider on that bill was another very small thing. It allowed Fangbook users to ‘Like’ or ‘Dislike’ the Council information that was being pushed onto Fangbook. ‘Liking’ was already a big part of Fangbook. It’s meaningless other than in Fangbook’s algorithm, but basically, it indicates the popularity of certain posts. Popular posts and pages and whatever else get promoted, and unpopular ones fester and go away. What the rider did was to officially allow ‘Liking’ on laws. It didn’t seem like much, except that laws proposed at Council that the Fangbook community liked the most rose to the top and were discussed more, and proposals that they didn’t like were ditched.”
 

Maurice watched Reginald and waited for him to go on. He slowly set down his chalice of blood.
 

“Don’t you see?” said Nikki, who’d already had this discussion with Reginald. “It makes the Fangbook community like a mock Council. They’re voting laws in or vetoing them.”
 

“So what?” said Maurice. “Let the losers play. It sounds about as harmful as fantasy football.”

“Fangbook is big, Maurice. It represents the will of the entire Vampire Nation. As goes Fangbook, so goes public opinion as a whole. Every time they vote a law up and you strike it down, you’re pissing off eighty percent of the vampires in this country. Every time an unpopular law sneaks through, thanks to friends like Brian on the Council, you’re pissing off eighty percent of the vampires in this country.”
 

Maurice held his palms up in a
So what?
gesture.
 

“Fifty thousand people who decided to stop being humans and become immortal hunters and killers are worth being afraid of. Fifty thousand people who think it’s fun and cool to post photos of themselves dismembering people.”
 

Reginald felt sick. Spelling it all out was giving him a headache. Or maybe it was so much pot pie and cheesecake.
 

“I made a mistake, Maurice,” he said.
 

Maurice looked over, his finger tracing circles lazily around the rim of his chalice.
 

Reginald kept his head down. He was supposed to be the brilliant one. Reginald had solved the Council relocation algorithm. Reginald had outsmarted the Council and overthrown its old leader. Reginald could read a whole book in seconds and had an encyclopedic memory of everything he’d ever experienced, nearly from birth until present, spanning both his vampire and human lives. He wasn’t supposed to make simple mistakes, but he had.
 

Months ago, when he, Nikki, and Maurice had masterminded the overthrow of Logan, the Vampire Nation’s previous Deacon, Nikki had still been human, and she’d pretended to be a vampire. She’d been armed only with dime store fangs, some flash powders, and her wits, and she’d told Reginald how terrified she’d been that the Guard would see right through her. They’d know she was human. They’d either kill her on the spot, or drink her dry.